I’ve been using an ad blocker for almost as long I’ve been using the Internet. It only took a short amount of time of having to deal with ads to convince me that I’d never ever want to deal with them again. Back then things were still a bit different and I assume a lot of people still kind of remember what it was like. Ads weren’t all served by one of three giant corporations and so they weren’t all that personalized and there was a lot less tracking. At the same time however there weren’t any rules as to how annoying an ad could get. Some people still refer to ad blockers as “popup blockers”. A certain kind of annoying ad that thankfully isn’t that common anymore since Google Ads et. al. don’t really allow them. At least that’s what I assume, since I don’t really see ads.
So back then the issue wasn’t just ads, but extremely annoying ads. We’re talking auto playing audio, opening new tabs and often new windows in the background, flashy animations and all the other neat features that flash player could do. The really egregious ones were those that would avoid your mouse. I don’t know how common those were but I remember that happening at least once. The only good thing I remember from that time was that some of those ads were interactive and would let you play little games. Other than that they were exclusively obnoxious and advertisers basically did and tried anything they could get away with. It was to be expected. Why would anyone be satisfied with just showing a text ad or a small still image when you can try and capture the users attention with loud music and flashy animations? They wouldn’t have done it had it not worked. And so with ads getting more and more invasive and annoying it was only a matter of time until someone would take it upon themselves to get rid of them.
And so that’s how I started using an ad blocker. One might assume that at this
point it’s basically part of everyone’s browser and considering how big of a
deal some companies are making of it that seems to be true. But is it really?
I did some professional research for eight months five minutes of googling
and here are some things I’ve found.
- China and India are ranked first and fourth among global ad block usage with 43% and 38.7% of “Adblocking penetration” in 2022 (Source: My ass, aka. paywalled at statista.com)
- another survey puts China and India at only 30% and 26% respectively as of Febuary 2024 (src)
- China has apparently roughly one billion Internet users in 2023, so that would be like 430 million users that don’t see ads (src)
- in Q1 of 2020 there were 236 million users of ad block on desktop, in Q2 of 2023 there were 416 million (src)
- in Q1 of 2020 there were 527 million users of ad block on mobile, in Q2 of 2023 there were 496 million (src)
- in a survey in Sweden from November 2021 10% answered that they do not know what an adblocker is, 26% said they have never used one, 14% use one rarely, 21% sometimes, 14% often and only 15% use one always (src)
- Ad block usage on mobile is extremely low compared to desktop, 23% vs. 8% in Sweden, 28% vs 12% in Germany (src, src)
So the basic takeaway is that the usage is at best stagnating and at worst decreasing. One of the statistics said it almost doubled over the past four years, but I’m not sure how accurate that is. This isn’t all that surprising since mobile phones and especially iPhones make it harder to block ads and most zoomers don’t even have or know how to use a computer anymore. From my own experience I’d say that almost no one I know uses an ad blocker on his phone. It’s too much work or they simply can’t even fathom the concept of an ad blocker. So all in all I’d say that ad blockers do not pose a significant threat to businesses like Google. They probably just really want to make sure that everyone using their service is seeing the ads. They’re probably not missing out on much money but ad block users are the ultimate dead beet. They don’t bring in ad revenue, they do their best to not provide any useful tracking data and on top of all that they’re probably also terminally online and use the service heavily. So potentially scaring them of by trying to block ad blockers doesn’t seem too bad to Google.
I’d be one of those people. I haven’t been logged into my Google account on the regular for well over five years and I haven’t been using the main YouTube page to watch videos for a couple of years either. So I don’t see ads, don’t bring in ad revenue, yet I make use of the service fairly often. If I’d be forced to login, use the main page and watch ads, I’d probably try to use YouTube as little as possible.
YouTube is really stuck between a rock and a hard place. They’re the number one video platform and for livestreaming they’re probably not far behind twitch and they’d like to keep that position but at the same time they have a hard time making money. They bet on advertising and tracking but ads are annoying so people block them. Simultaneously creators are making a lot of money with ad reads and sponsors and YouTube has to host it for free and (virtually) forever without getting a share of it. The only other revenue is YouTube premium (and music, I think?) but people are used to it being free so very few are paying for it. Basically any potential change they might attempt to get more money will have negative consequences.
I’m well aware that the service that YouTube offers is pretty valuable. There’s a huge amount of literal mindless consumerism garbage on there, but there’s also years worth of informative content and decent entertainment on there which I would actually be willing to pay for but my requirements for it would make it impossible. Here’s my pipe dream:
- simple and cheap monthly fee (probably less than 10 bucks) payable anonymously
- no strings attached, i.e. no “deals” trying to lure you into paying for a year in advance to get a discount
- no DRM whatsoever, i.e. the way YouTube is right now, let me download and view content in any way I want
- no tracking, ideally you’d get an API key that you can use to search for videos and view them in any third party client you want
- acceptable limitations, i.e. traffic per month and amount of IPs using the API key simultaneously
- no gigantic eula/acceptable use garbage that can change at a moments notice
That’ll obviously never happen but at least it’s not like I’m not willing to compromise.
Some other statistics:
- surprisingly, people are not dumb enough to pay for ad blockers (src, src)
- younger people in Germany (26-35) are more likely to use an ad blocker (58%), zoomers (15-25) however use it less (51%) (src)
- at the same time roughly 45% of Gen Z are often annoyed at online ads in Germany, 49% in the Netherlands and 36% in the US (src, src, src)
- 35% of Gen Z in Germany don’t mind ads if they get free shit for it, 30% in the Netherlands and 35% in the US (src, src, src)
- 30% of Gen Z in Germany have bought garbage because it was shilled by e-celebs, 25% in the Netherlands and 23% in the US (src, src, src)
- 21% of zoomers in Germany don’t mind if their personal data is used for advertising, 14% in the Netherlads and 15% in the US (src, src, src)